Liu Shaochen Harvests from Scientific Research: A Visit with the Academician of Taiwan Central Academy, honorary dean of JNU’s Environment and Climate Research Institute

Time: June 16th, 2017

Author: Liang Yue

Publisher: news center

Liu Shaochen is the honorary president of JNU's Environment and Climate Research Institute, the academician of Taiwan Central Academy and also an academician of the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS). His ISI is highly cited, with total citation frequency of about 9,500. His average number of citations per article is 62, and his h-index reaches to 58. Liu has won the first Science and Technology Award of the CTCI Foundation, the Outstanding Paper Award of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Dr. Huang Guangqian Academic Paper Award of the Meteorological Societ,y and the Director’s Award of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In 1994, he was selected as a member of the American Geophysical Union. Although he has lived in the United States for more than 30 years, Liu is always full of nostalgia for China. In America, he mostly reads literature of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. Words always have a magical power that seems to ease his deep nostalgia.

In April 2016, Liu was appointed honorary dean and professor of JNU's Environment and Climate Research Institute, his first time as a full-time professor on the mainland. "The reason I have come to Jinan University is that there is a group of people I can work with," he said, "and I hope to make progress in research on the relationship between the changes of extreme climate and global warming, and the relationship between air pollution and global warming, and reach some conclusions on the problems of climate change, extreme climate and air pollution."

At the end of 2016, Liu's research project "The Influencing Process and Mechanism of Climate Change on Atmospheric Compound Pollution" was named a major research project/key support program of the National Natural Science Foundation. He said affectionately that he would contribute to mainland China all his experience as a director and researcher in the United States, as well as the research methods and attitudes of basic science he learned as a chair professor at Georgia Institute of Technology.

More than a year ago, Liu's team launched a project to forecast annual rainfall in South China based on recognition of the impact of global warming on heavy rainfall in recent decades. "Even the United States, the most technologically advanced country, can only predict whether the rainfall will exceed or below the average value of the past after three months to one year," he said. "They can only make qualitative forecasts, but we can make quantitative forecasts on heavy rainfall in the next three months, six months or even a year, which is world-leading."

Liu's team is also developing a way to forecast smog days. "It is truly surprising to forecast the number of smog days," he said. "These are scientific research achievements of our hard work."

At present, Liu's team is proceeding with research on the impact of climate change on air pollution; the influence of global warming on extreme climate and extreme rainfall; and understanding and quantifying the basic feedback effect of climate change.